Failure Week At Wimbledon High School!

This week was Failure Week at Wimbledon High School in London, UK.

I’ve heard of Spirit Week, Homecoming Week, Red Heart Week (coming to a school near you next week), Green Week, but Failure Week?

Students at this private, all-girls school attended workshops, assemblies, and numerous activities, with parents and tutors joining in with tales of their own failures. One of the presenters was Nick Carter, a climber who failed on his attempt to summit Mount Everest.

Tales Of Successful People Who Have Failed And Moved On

There were also YouTube clips of famous and successful people who have failed along the way and moved on.

Ironically, this is a school that boasts some of the highest exam scores in England, and prides itself on its invigorating, single-sex environment. But this week was all about failure.

The goal was to teach the student body to embrace risk and learn from their mistakes, and the emphasis was encouraging them to aim high and tackle the unknown, rather than playing it safe and perhaps achieving less.

“The Girls Need To Learn How To Fail Well”

Wimbledon’s headmistress, Heather Hanbury, said she wanted to show that it is completely acceptable and completely normal not to succeed at times in life.

From the BBC:

Ms Hanbury told BBC News that she had placed a great emphasis on developing resilience and robustness among the girls since she arrived at the school four years ago.

“The girls need to learn how to fail well – and how to get over it and cope with it,” she said.

“Fear of failing can be really crippling and stop the girls doing things they really want to do.

“The pupils are hugely successful but can sometimes overreact to failure even though it can sometimes be enormously beneficial to them.

“We want them to be brave – to have courage in the classroom,” she added.

Courage In The Classroom?

I love this! When I was growing up in the southwest of England, and attending an all-girls’s school, there was a general sense that we girls were just not as important as the boys attending their school, across the road. I even had a teacher, a former army major, who informed us that he never let his military buddies know that he was teaching at a girls’ school, or they would make fun of him.

Far from pushing us to take risks, the overriding message from my teachers was to behave, do well on exams, go to university and hope that while there I could meet a nice man and get married. If anything, it was assumed that we already were failures, by being female.

How I envy the girls at Wimbledon High!

Was Failure Week Successful?

Here are some comments from the Wimbledon High School website:

‘You have to accept your failures. You can move on and they can even help you to success in the future.’

‘Failure will happen – accept it.’

‘You’re aiming for the top grades – it’s about knowing if you don’t get them that it’s not the end of the world.’

‘If you fail first, but then succeed afterwards, the feeling is amazing.’

What do you think? Is this a good way to encourage young women to lose their fears and aim high?

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Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
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Sian R.

9:55AM PST on Feb 13, 2012

I make a point of making mistakes. I've made a lot of them in my life.
Ergo - I've learned such a lot. People come to me to find out how to do ever so many things and I usually have the answer

send a green star

KS G.

4:06AM PST on Feb 13, 2012

Thanks for the article.

s. r.

9:15PM PST on Feb 12, 2012

nice!

Helen K.

2:51PM PST on Feb 12, 2012

Great idea! I was always devastated by failure and it did almost cripple me - until one year at high school (in England) a (nasty) teacher of my favorite subject told me I was never going to make it at my chosen profession! Was that ever a turning point. After I stopped crying I was so angry, I made up my mind that just because he was a sociopath (he was) it wasn't going to sour me nor put me off my subject. And I prevailed. We fortunately got a good teacher the next year and I went on to study my favorite subject at university. That idiot could have ruined my career before it began, so yes, lets have lessons in what to do if you occasionally run into failure.
But having said all of that, I want to add that most of our teachers were wonderful, there were just a couple of bad eggs.

Jarno L.

12:40PM PST on Feb 12, 2012

Learning how to approach failure right is important for success in any difficult pursuit. I wish I'd learned not to fear failure earlier myself.

I play chess as a hobby, and chess is one game where EVERYBODY fails, often quite regularly. The difference between a good player, or a player who is constantly improving, and someone who stays stagnant at the same level of play, is how they approach their losses; a good, developing player thinks about their lost games, and what they did or missed that led to the loss, and the very best put time and effort into thoroughly analyzing their games; the lost ones more than the won ones.

The stagnant players tend to try to forget their losses as quickly as possible, and only ever analyze and rehash the games they won.

I suspect this is common in many areas that require practice to achieve expertise, not just chess.

ii q.

12:03PM PST on Feb 12, 2012

Interesting.
Good thought!
TY

James C.

10:43AM PST on Feb 12, 2012

In this day and age of so-called ‘instant’ stardom’ children need to learn that ‘failure’ is not the end, but a signpost at the crossroads. Thanks to the insidious influence of the media, a growing percentage of children identify their ambition as “to be famous” without any thought as to how they would achieve this. Learning that some of the most famous people in the world are the very ones who experienced and learned from failure is essential to a child’s development.

David L.

7:56AM PST on Feb 12, 2012

The concept in itself is excellent.

However, maybe such campaigns/courses could be retitled as "Learning from Failure" or "Moving On from Failures", for a more-positive sounding spin, for some markets..

Just a thought ?

Brenda T.

6:33AM PST on Feb 12, 2012

I am impressed! I have always taught that we must learn from our mistakes. Getting something wrong, gives us a chance to really understand a problem because we have to make the effort to tackle it from source! Maybe even have the courage to ask for assistance.

Gloria M.

7:15PM PST on Feb 11, 2012

Wow. Finally a school that is teaching its students how to really live. Failure is a part of everyone's life. Learning how to overcome it is essential.